Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How will constitutional recognition through a voice help to deliver improved health outcomes for First Nations peoples in Australia?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lalor for her question. As badges in the House indicate, today is R U OK? Day, a campaign that was started by Gav Larkin about 14 years ago, who had lost his dad to suicide many years before that. I had the privilege of knowing Gav very well, as many in this House did, and his powerful message reminds us all of our own individual capacity to help someone in trouble, with a simple question, reaching out to them and asking, 'Are you okay?' We lost Gav, tragically young, to cancer more than a decade ago, but his campaign, as we all see today, is living long through his family. Today there'll be millions of conversations around Australia reflecting his original vision.

R U OK? is a message for us to keep front of mind over the next 30 days, through this referendum campaign. As health minister, I'm already receiving reports of really serious spikes in levels of distress among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Lifeline, which operates 13YARN, a crisis support line for Indigenous Australians, is reporting record levels of requests for help and for support, as are other services in the area. It's an echo of Minister Burney's injunction earlier this week for us to treat each other with respect, no matter what our view about the question that the parliament has put before the Australian people for October 14.

A good doctor listens carefully to their patients because a good doctor knows that that leads to better outcomes. A wise parliament should listen carefully to a group in our community who have lived with such poor outcomes and opportunities decade after decade. I can't think of an area of policy where an advisory voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be of more value than in health. Year after year, this chamber receives the annual Closing the gap report, which lays out in awful detail the yawning gap in health outcomes and life expectancy between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the country. With the best of intentions and substantial investment, things are not changing. Indeed, in some areas they are getting worse.

The approach we've followed year after year is simply not working. On this day in particular we should reflect on the fact that young First Nations Australians are twice as likely to take their own life as the rest of the country. Those data aren't shifting, and the causes are complex. The consequences are shatteringly tragic. They extend well beyond the health discipline or the health portfolio. Listening to community representatives through a voice will help us respond to challenges like that. As the PM said this morning: if the advice is good, we'll follow it; if it's not good, we won't. It's a pretty simple concept, really, but potentially just so powerful. (Time expired)

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

on indulgence—I rise to associate the opposition with the minister's comments about R U OK? Day—only—and the importance of R U OK? Day to every Australian. As I go across the country in this role, it is more important than ever that we stay connected as communities. Whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in schools or whether it is in this parliament, we should be looking after each other, today and on all days, particularly young people. Young people have gone through so much—through COVID, through disaster—and they are also experiencing the cost-of-living pressures through their parents, who are coming home and expressing those stresses with mortgages, rents and energy. So today on R U OK? Day I encourage every Australian to reach out to each other and ask, 'Are you okay?' It is a very important question that leads to a very important conversation.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just for the member for Lindsay, I'll be writing to her later today about the use of indulgence.